Blood
by allygationz
Summary: Kesar finally comes to the decision that she cannot allow Shakti's abuse of her any longer and decides to do something about it. *-*Now complete!*-*
1. Chapter 1

**Allahabad**

Lying sleepless in bed, Kesar's thoughts could not help going to her new baby daughter. She did not want her daughter to grow up in a household where she was treated as though a second-class citizen because she'd been born female. She wanted her daughter to be able to learn, if she wanted to learn, and not to have to suffer humiliation and physical abuse because she was female. She knew that her daughter, too, would be frowned upon because of the darkness of her skin. With a sudden determination, she decided that she would not allow it; she _could not_ allow it.

Her husband, Shakti, did not love her. He treated her badly, he beat her and constantly insulted her for her looks and denigrated her ability for intelligent thought; he was a horrible person and even with all of her best efforts, she'd been able to do nothing to change this fact. He may have allowed their daughter to be born, but she could not forget the blood that lay on both their hands due to all the times he had beat her and she'd stuck around afterward; four innocent lives that had never been born or grown up to feel their family's love or anything else.

At first, she had loved him, despite his ways, but now she could not ignore it; now that she'd held their baby in her arms, she knew that to stay would be a greater treachery to their child than to leave her husband and his family; the family that seemed unwilling to stand up for her when she could not herself. She would not miss them, she thought. She would do her very best not to, anyway.

She would miss Pratigya, though. Pratigya had stood up for her when no one else had, and she'd somehow helped Krishna to be a better person, if only for a while. It was because of Pratigya that her baby had been born and hadn't been aborted as had happened in the past. She owed her baby's life to Pratigya for doing what she'd been unable to do herself; standing up to her husband.

Despite what others might have thought, Kesar did not believe that Pratigya had done a bad thing, she had saved a life, after all. She had stood up for something that mattered, something that _really_ mattered. It hadn't been just a trivial thing, or a passing phase; the life of another always mattered, Kesar believed.

That was why she was going to leave tonight: and she would be taking her baby daughter with her.

* * *

**Mumbai**

From up above, the sun shone down on the young woman's face, now paler than it had ever been in life. Senior Inspector Abhijeet suppressed a sigh at the futility; a young woman just beginning her life; she shouldn't have been lying in this field out here; she should have been at home or at school, perhaps even at work. She should not have been dead.

Inspector Fredricks returned from his preliminary search of the scene accompanied by Inspector Sachin; he was not smiling. It was not a smiling manner when a young person met their end before their time.

Freddy offered his superior a slight nod, then glanced down at the woman and Dr. Salunkhe, a forensics expert with whom the Crime Investigation Division worked. He passed the muddy bus tickets he'd unearthed a short distance away at a patch of overturned earth to Abhijeet, the solemn expression never wavering from his face.

"She was travelling with a child," Sachin said.

"And where is that child now?" Abhijeet wondered aloud, voicing the question that the others had all been thinking, too.

* * *

Disclaimer

_C.I.D._ © B. P. Singh, Pradeep Uppoor; Fireworks Production and Sony Entertainment Television.

_Mann Kee Awaaz Pratigya_ © Pearl Grey; Spellbound Productions and STAR Plus.


	2. Chapter 2

The deceased young woman's bus ticket allowed for a trip beginning in the small, rural town of Allahabad, and it was to this town that Abhijeet intended to travel in his search for the poor young woman's identity; he also had hopes that he might be able to find her family to bring this sad news to them, and though he knew it would be very painful for them, he also knew that they would want to know what had happened to their loved one rather than going without knowing and never knowing whether the slim thread of hope they clung to was a false hope or not.

To accompany him, he had chosen Freddy, and Tasha, a sub-inspector with the team. He hoped that Tasha would be able to offer the proper degree of comfort that he was afraid he might not be able to offer; working the job as long as he had he realised that he had had to harden himself to some truths, and some of that hardening could not be undone or was extremely hard to undo.

In any case, he thought, he had allowed it into place for a reason, and it would likely not be wise to allow it to slip, even for a short while. He believed in maintaining professionalism as best as possible in all instances, and that to sacrifice one's professionalism could amount to dangerous consequences under the right circumstances. He did not like to take such risks, so he had decided that Tasha would come to Allahabad along with Freddy and he; a woman might also be able to placate any other women that they encountered more easily than a man, he considered.

Coming from another woman, what had to be said might be taken as being with a little more regard and sensitivity than were it coming from a man whom inevitably some women would believe would have trouble understanding a woman's perspective and feelings, and empathising with them.

Abhijeet himself had a great respect for women and believed them capable of anything they set their mind and heart to, given the right nurturing environment and if their self-esteem was not beaten down for one reason or another, although he considered that, in the ways of emotions, women and men traditionally were seen as differing from one another and differences in what was proper to express and what wasn't also existed.

The aim, Abhijeet had decided, once the three reached Allahabad, was first to visit the local authorities and to ask after any recent cases of missing persons, or merely of persons known to have moved into the city, specifically to Mumbai. After that, if anything came up, if they were successful with finding out that someone (and/or a young child) had gone missing, Abhijeet would present them with the photograph of the young woman and ask to be directed to the young woman's family to convey the unhappy news. From experience, he knew that death was not the way anyone ultimately envisaged their loved one as having gone; even when it was suspected, it always broke hearts to learn of the truth.

* * *

**Allahabad**

As they drove into town, Abhijeet reflected on the look of the town; it came over to him like a pleasant place to live and not a place where many people who lived there could begin to imagine some of the horrors that sometimes – always too many times – afflicted the cities with their large droves of people. He instinctively knew that whatever the outcome of that day, he would be bringing with him news that would end up hurting someone.

_But perhaps, in the end, though it has hurt them, the wounds they have carried around as though they were fresh will also be able to heal over in time, leaving only a small scar and many, many happy memories to outweigh the bad ones_, he thought. He was certainly hoping so.

At the police station, they learned that a young woman named Kesar Singh had gone missing within the last month; her family had tried their hardest to track her down and had used up much money in doing so, but had remained hopeful to the last. She had also had with her her young daughter when she had gone missing, they were told.

Giving them no nonsense, Abhijeet explained that the young woman was deceased. She had been found dead in a field; all that they had had to go on to try to identify her by were two bus tickets that she had purchased that indicated that she had left Allahabad for the city some three weeks ago.

After that, they sat down in one of the officer's private offices to talk some more about the young woman and discuss the missing child. The child was a baby, really; a baby girl. She was seven months old and had been six months old when she and her mother had gone missing. Her name was Usha. It was a good name, it meant _sunrise_; it was a name that held a lot of hope.

Later, they were told that they would be allowed to follow the police vehicle that would be going to the former home of Kesar Singh to break the horrible news.

On the drive over to the Singh household, Abhijeet did not make comment on the watery look in Tasha's eyes, though he knew that the officer's comment about the little child had really upset her. He would have spoken were they alone, but he did not feel like bringing undue attention to the fact in front of Freddy in case he upset Tasha or embarrassed her by doing so. She was a good officer and he did not want her to think that he valued her less than the men on the team; he considered each member of the team valuable and unique in their own way and of equal standing as human beings.

He set his mind to something else, in the meantime. The Singh family, they had been told, was of great standing in the community, which brought many queries to light in his mind. One that particularly played in the fore of his mind was whether the family had any enemies – which, of course, they would have – how many they had and who they were, and if any had been seen to have any wins of late; the sort of wins that might have corresponded with their enemies' pain at losing not only one, but two, loved ones.

At the moment, he reminded himself, too, that he should be most interested in the family's reaction to learning the news. Even those that seemed the most harmonious families on the outside could, on the inside, harbour dark and deadly secrets. As an investigator, he could not help but consider all the possibilities before he could strike them from the list.

Once he had met the family, he thought, he would re-evaluate his thoughts with his new thoughts and the findings and those of his colleagues.

* * *

Once they'd parked the vehicles in a safe parking spot off the road, the group ventured up to the door and knocked, awaiting a response. A short while later, the door was opened by an elderly lady and a younger woman and, once it was explained that they had come with news, they were invited in.

Abhijeet paid careful attention to everyone's reactions and behaviour; also, as much as it could have been frowned on, it was a relief to be able to take his mind off his own upset by immersing himself in observing someone else's.

* * *

Everyone in the house who was family was gathered in one room, to begin with, and the officers from the police station explained that it was Kesar's husband, Shakti, who had reported her and Usha, their daughter, missing.

Yes, Shakti agreed, he had woken to find his wife missing and when he had gone looking for their child he had found her also to be missing. He had searched the entire household and had still not been able to locate either his wife or child's whereabouts when he had suddenly had an ill feeling that something bad must have happened.

Though the matter had been brought to the attention of the local authorities, he continued, nothing had come of it; neither his wife's nor his child's whereabouts. It was as though they had both simply vanished; it did not seem that some misfortune had befallen them, they were just gone. It was his suspicion that his wife had left him; perhaps she had even left him for another man.

Shakti's undivided attention then settled on Abhijeet and the older man began to feel very uncomfortable; now everyone was waiting for him, listening to him, he knew, but there were only so much he could say, there only so many questions he could ask, and in the setting that they were, with the news they came bearing, it could only be worse.

Adopting his most professional tone, Abhijeet explained that he had come from Mumbai, and introduced both himself and both of his colleagues. All of this, he noticed, seemed to annoy Shakti, at least, it didn't seem to interest him and Abhijeet had a feeling he just wanted to hear what, if anything, they had come to tell him about the whereabouts of his wife and child.

Abhijeet retrieved the photograph of Kesar that had been taken before the autopsy from a pocket in his jacket. "I am very sorry to inform you, sir, but your wife, Kesar Singh, was found dead yesterday," he finally revealed. "The whereabouts of the child she was travelling with, of your daughter, are still as yet unknown. At the present time, this is all we know." Suppressing a heavy breath, he handed the picture over to Shakti, wondering why the man was smiling.

"This is a joke!" Shakti laughed, his voice loud and amused, but only on the outside; inside, it was full of anger. "Kesar has put you all up to this! These are not real inspectors! This is one of Kesar's tricks! I don't know how she has done it, but she has!"

Abhijeet could see that the man's words were upsetting everyone, most of all his family, but he could not see a way to make him stop speaking, then Shakti began to laugh as though it was very funny and Abhijeet could not help feeling embarrassed for the youngest woman of the household when silent tears began to pour down her face.

He nodded to the photograph. "Please, if you will just take a look at this photo, you will see that no one is joking here. This is a very serious matter, sir. Your wife is dead; possibly, she has even met with foul play, and your daughter is missing. I advise you to take this very seriously; nobody would joke about something like this, least of all the law."

Finally, it seemed, Shakti began to reach for the photograph, his eyes still telling Abhijeet that he thought it was all a big joke, until his fingers were holding the photo in his hand and his eyes had looked away from Abhijeet's, down to the photograph of his wife who he had said he last remembered having been alive and well just weeks earlier and was now dead, and Abhijeet saw his fingers start to shake and hoped he did not drop the photo.

"How could you do this to me!" Shakti yelled at the photograph suddenly. "I loved you! I gave you everything you could have ever wanted! What other man would have done so! How could you hurt me like this! You ungrateful woman!"

He was ranting, by then, at a photograph of his dead wife, no less, and Abhijeet was afraid the tears in his eyes would turn to anger at his team, the ones who had brought this tragic news, and was relieved when a younger man, presumably Shakti's brother – they looked like brothers to Abhijeet – entered the room and hurried to his side, saying firmly, "That is enough, brother. That is enough now. That is no way to address the dead."

It was clear to Abhijeet that Shakti had held a great deal of anger against his wife, but was that anger enough to push him to kill her if she had threatened to leave him and take their child, he wondered. Was that anger enough to push him over the edge if he found out that she was planning to leave him without ever saying a word to anyone.


	3. Chapter 3

The journey to Mumbai, the most populous city in India, should have been an enjoyable one, exciting, even, but with the weight of what was to be undertaken once there took away any feeling other than sadness.

As they journeyed closer to the city, Shakti's thoughts returned to the last time he'd seen his wife alive, the last words he'd spoken to her and those that she'd spoken to him, that last glimmer of her eyes, that last waver in her voice and, suddenly, he felt as though... as though he would do anything to turn back time and make things right again so that Kesar would not be dead, but so that she would be alive, alive to hear his words when he told her that he was going to change, when he told her that, underneath, he truly cared for her, even when, in the transition from the inside to the outside, it got twisted and confused and, more often than not, angry.

He did, he realised, love his wife. In his own way, he did. He only now wished that he'd been able to show her how much whilst she'd still been alive.

He felt a sudden burst of anger at his father and mother and siblings. Why had they, seeing how he was and where he was headed, allowed him to continue on that way; why had his father encouraged him to downgrade his wife and insult her with those hurtful, harsh words? Feeling, in the backs of his eyes, a small pinch as though he was about to cry, he quietly took several deep breaths. He had not only come to the city to identify his deceased wife's body and farewell her into the next life, he had also come to look for their daughter and bring her home. He would not rest, he told himself, silently promising his dead wife that, at least, until their daughter was found alive and well and the perpetrators of this horrific crime were brought to justice, until his wife was avenged.

In his mind, he could hear his wife's timid voice telling him, _Don't overextend yourself, husband. Find our baby; bring her home. Do not go looking for trouble; she will not be able to stand losing her father, too._

That was when the tears really threatened to come, but he fought them back, telling them that Kesar would hate to see him that way when he finally arrived to see her.

* * *

Krishna had accompanied his older brother, Shakti, to Mumbai whilst his mother and father had stayed behind to bring the news of Kesar's death to her parents and family. Presently, he chanced a glance in his brother's direction and noticed that he looked... well, he looked fine, aside from his quietness. He did not look overly upset, his expression was almost blank except for the little touch of impatience. With a sudden flush, Krishna realised that just maybe he was a little afraid of his brother, afraid of his anger and all that went along with it. He could not fully understand how his brother was like this, though he knew that their father's continual instigations had not served a helping hand rather they had damaged his brother, and now he realised just how much, now he realised how badly and deeply.

The cold, fast fear he felt was tinged with sadness; utter sadness. For the rest of his life, his brother would have to live with the knowledge that the last day he'd seen his wife alive, he had been unkind, as usual, and he would have to live with the very real possibility that his wife had not known how deep his feelings for her had gone, that she had not known how he had cared for her.

He did not envy his brother this and, he told himself, when he finally returned home, he would make very sure that Pratigya knew just how he felt about her and how much he cared for and loved her. He would tell her how he felt, and that without her, it was very possible that the future would just cease to exist, without her, life would not be worth living anymore.

All of a sudden, that was exactly how he felt and, all of a sudden, Pratigya was not with him, she wasn't even close. If he could have taken her in his arms, he would have. But she had remained in Allahabad, and he was here, in this vehicle, travelling to Mumbai to identify his brother's wife's body. Suddenly, he felt as though he may be physically ill. He could not think how she might look, he could not think the unspeakable horrors that might have befallen her, the terror and fear she must have felt, for her child, for herself, and then, in the end, for her life.

If only it hadn't had to have come to this, he thought, if only he'd put his brother back in line some way; if only he'd acted sooner, if only Pratigya had come to him sooner.

He would care for her and ensure that nothing bad ever again befell her, he thought. He would do his best to be the best that he could, and to be the best husband anyone could say they'd met. And he would be her friend, her very best friend.

For just a second, he wondered if his brother now despised him, if, at that very moment even, he felt anger that Kesar was gone whilst Pratigya was not. And then he dismissed the thought.

* * *

**Mumbai**

Once they had arrived in the city, Shakti and Krishna were driven to a hospital where they were told Kesar's body was being kept. At the mention of his wife as nothing more, in death, as a body, Shakti felt a wave of boiling anger, but he managed to swallow his anger and fight back the words that yearned to leap to his tongue. He would not insult anyone today, not on this day.

As they walked through the halls of this hospital, Shakti could not shake the feeling of gloominess. The hospital was gloomy where he had imagined them bright, where he had imagined them places of healing, but this hospital was sad and even more so saddening. He could not imagine how a person should heal in a place such as this, so he kept walking, the sound of his footfalls the only sound that he truly trusted to tell him that this was real and not a terrible, terrible nightmare. As he walked, he grew to despise that sound as much as he clung to it, too.

When they finally reached the morgue, Shakti found that he was cold, suddenly taken with an unshakable chill. He imagined this was how Kesar felt, freezing cold, always freezing cold. Now, there was no more chance of warmth.

Realising that he was no longer the only one to have seen his wife undressed, he felt fresh anger bubble up, but it didn't warm him any, it just made the cold colder and the lump of anger in his chest even harder than before. He allowed himself a long, deep intake of breath to calm his nerves, and prepared to face his wife one more time. This time, he told himself, he would be able to tell her he was sorry; this time, he would be able to hold her hand, to touch her face, without seeing her flinch even once.

He did not feel glad about this, though.

* * *

The sheet was drawn back from Kesar's pale face, and Shakti realised that his wife had truly been beautiful; she had had her own quiet beauty, a beauty that he could scarcely believe he had not been able to see fully until this moment. Taken by a fierce hollowness inside, Shakti seized his wife's hand and collapsed over her, his tears finally making themselves known in unstoppable torrents. He was sorry, he was so, so sorry! He did not know the words that he spoke, that he sobbed into his wife's dark hair, but he knew that he was sorry, so very sorry.

* * *

As they left the hospital, Shakti stopped abruptly and turned to his younger brother. His expression was serious; perhaps, he'd never been more serious in his life before. "Don't make the same mistake that I did, brother," he told Krishna. "If you love your wife, if you should be blessed with a child, tell them always what you feel." With that, he left his brother standing in confused silence. He would go to his daughter now; he would find her and bring her home.

End / Anta


End file.
